BREEDING AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT. 13 



to a great extent hereditary. We must, moreover, take care 

 that the qualities that existed in the ancestry have not been 

 weakened or destroyed by injudicious breeding or feeding. 

 Many an animal with a natural tendency to milk has been ruined 

 by early forcing. Whilst, as we hope to show, in the following 

 pages, generous diet from birth is necessary to quick and 

 healthy development, undue forcing, such as is resorted to in 

 order to develop abnormal growth in show animals, weakens and 

 often completely destroys milk-producing qualities. It is in 

 this way, principally, that discredit has been thrown on certain 

 families of Shorthorns as milk-producers, and thus the race that 

 were originally noticeable for the quantity of their yield are 

 now frequently unable to rear their produce, and choice animals 

 require foster-mothers to supply their wants. 



The folly of forcing young animals for show purposes is 

 acknowledged on all sides, and those who possess the most 

 valuable blood will not run the risk of damaging their animals 

 by forcing. It may be allowable to make an animal extra- 

 ordinarily fat for the butcher, in order to show the public of 

 what a breed is capable. The animal is for the shambles, and, 

 provided he lives till ready for the knife, the end sought for is 

 obtained, and the feeder is the only loser, the extra fat costing 

 more to put on than it will yield ; but this extra fat state is not 

 a healthy condition, and animals so fed lose much of their vital 

 energy, as was too evident from the collapse of the beasts at 

 the Smithfield Show of 1873. Lean stock would not have 

 su-ffered to the same extent. Shorthorns, especially, suffer from 

 the disease known as fatty degeneration of the heart, which 

 may be explained to the unlearned as meaning a deposit of fat 

 between the muscles of the heart, which greatly lessens and 

 sometimes altogether arrests the expansive and contractive 

 powers. The object of the breeder should be to so treat his 

 young animals as to develop frame and flesh by supplying food 

 containing the constituents of bone and muscle, and allowing of 

 sufficient exercise to develop and strengthen the frame and con- 

 stitution. 



Very little is really known on the subject of breeding. Mr. 

 J. K. Fowler, who delivered a lecture on the subject before the 

 Central Farmer's Club some years since, considers that the sire 



